MILAN, ITALY — A dozen masked men in Rome attacked Italian daily La Republiccaearlier this month, in a show of renewed confidence by a neofascist element that Italy has long struggled to suppress. The faceless men threw flares at the media outlet’s office — which also houses the publisher L’Espresso Group and a magazine by the same name — and declared “war” on the paper’s publisher.

The attack is just the latest in a stream of fascist actions that often target society’s most vulnerable. The incidents harken back to the dark day’s of Italian fascism.

“The Italian right is passing from mobilization to techniques of public intimidation. The recent attacks on the important media outlets La Repubblica and L’Espresso mimic those of the original squadrists who assaulted socialist, liberal, and Catholic newspaper headquarters and their printers,” Dr. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, told ThinkProgress. “The fragmented left and a public that does not want to come to terms with the crimes of Italian Fascism are a recipe for the right’s further growth.”

Shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump took the oath of office, a slew of characters emerged from the far-right fringe of Europe’s political spectrum and stood for national elections. Some expected Trump’s election to bolster a global wave of far right-wing populism. This was shortly after the United Kingdom voted for Brexit, after all. Election defeats in the Netherlands, France, and Germany returned a sense of normality to the fragility of the European Union — at least temporarily.

The threat of far-right fringe groups, though, was not to win elections to lead European nations, but to push their agendas into the mainstream and make their parties widely accepted.

And in Italy, a country in which fascism never really went away, the far right is not only politically active but attempting to smash the political norms of liberal democracy.

Ben Ghiat realized this firsthand when a piece she wrote in The New Yorker about Italy’s standing fascist monuments was met with days of social media trolling.

“I woke up to find myself trending in Italy and not in a good way … every newspaper published sarcastic and highly critical articles about me and the piece, and I was besieged by hundreds of trolls on every platform,” she said. “It was crazy, the volume of trolls was so high that my Facebook Messenger would not load for days.”

The spectrum of Italy’s right wing is vast. Closest to the center is the Forza Italia party of former premier Silvio Berlusconi. The 81-year-old’s past governments included members of avowedly neofascist parties. He’s also seeking to overturn a ban on running for the premiership in order to retake power over the peninsula.

Further to the right is the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim Lega Nord, led by Matteo Salvini. The Lega Nord enjoys more support in Italy’s north and once advocated for a separate state, but is now trying to make inroads in Italy’s southern regions by targeting immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

“Extreme right-wing and xenophobic tendencies have been for decades a constant and broadly accepted element of Italian political life,” Matteo Garavoglia, nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe, told ThinkProgress.

The latest attack on the media offices garnered widespread condemnation from the political mainstream, including from Salvini. More surprisingly, though, another neofascist group called Casa Pound also condemned the attack. Casa Pound, a nativist group named after the fascist American poet Ezra Pound, caused concern after winning a municipal election seat in the Roman suburb of Ostia last month. Following the election victory, the group’s partisans sometimes made brazen displays of support for the fascist party and leadership of Benito Mussolini.

Local media in Italy claims that the far right behind such attacks are funded by Russia and other like-minded movements in Europe. Reports that neofascist groups are forming a European network, with Russian President Vladimir Putin pulling the strings, are often suggestive and hard to substantiate. But there are definite links between anti-immigrant and nativist right-wing groups around the continent.

The attack on La Republicca was accredited to the Forza Nuova (FN), a small, avowedly fascist group. The FN’s leader is Roberto Fiore, who self identifies as an anti-capitalist, anti-communist, Catholic fascist with 11 children. Fiore derives much of his ideology from Julius Evola — a fascist whose ideology has been cited by Steve Bannon. In the 1980s, Fiore fled Italy to the United Kingdom after police found explosives and weapons at an FN office. While in exile, Fiore built connections to Nick Griffin, then leader of the xenophobic British National Party — a group whose leaders allegedly have connections to the Kremlin.

“What is certain is that the Italian extreme right is strongly fascinated by the figure of Putin and his way of managing power in Russia, as well as by other radical right leaders in eastern Europe,” Pietro Castelli Gattinara, author of the book The Politics of Migration in Italy: Perspectives on Local Debates and Party, told ThinkProgress via email.

“There is also evidence that some neofascist militants have participated in riots and violence at the time of the Ukrainian crisis, in cooperation with Russian and Ukrainian extremists and militias. Besides that, the extreme right is currently embedded in a dense transnational network, so that actors in Italy are often taking part in joint events with their Greek (e.g. Golden Dawn) or French counterparts (e.g. Les Identitaires),” Castelli Gattinara said.

Italy’s far right continues to cause alarm with targeted attacks like the one on La Repubblica, but they do not enjoy widespread support in the peninsula. Experts aren’t convinced they’ll be storming their way back into power any time soon.

“We have mainly witnessed a re-mobilization by small social movement actors and parties that have long been present in the Italian political scene,” Castelli Gattinara said. “Both actors do not appear to be enjoying much growth in terms of militancy, mobilization potential or electoral success. In the municipality of Ostia, where CasaPound got 10 [percent] of the votes, the turnout was so low that the actual votes in support for CasaPound are no more than [5,000].”

The main concern for the future, then, is the continental and global seeds being planted by these far-right groups. The groups in Europe and the United States are coagulating around similar issues — particularly when it comes to anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim platforms. A lot of what emerges from the far right is reactionary in nature, but the objective is clear and dangerous.

“Axis 2.0 has been shaping up for some time in Europe,” Ben Ghiat said, “with Putin in the place of Hitler as funder and instigator and United States President Donald Trump helping him and the right achieve their aim of undoing liberal democracy.”

MILAN, ITALY — The far-right populist wave that has swept Europe and the United States since 2016 has a major foothold in Italy, where the 5 Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle) has quickly emerged as the country’s most popular party.

The M5S isn’t a typical far-right party. In fact, on issues like environmental protection, public water, and sustainable transport, it can often sound downright left-wing. But while it may seem like a breath of fresh air to have an anti-corruption, environmentally-conscious party leading in polls in a major European nation, don’t inhale too sharply just yet. Because while the party’s attitude toward the environment and public welfare recalls Bernie Sanders, its views on immigration, refugees, the euro, and improved relations with Russia more closely resemble those of far-right French leader Marine Le Pen.

Origins

The M5S was formed in 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a popular comedian and blogger, and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist. Grillo, 68, became famous in the 1980s for his stinging political satire of Italy’s leading politicians. In 1987, he was banned from television for offending then-Prime Minister and Socialist Party leader Bettino Craxi. He then remained out of the public eye for almost 20 years.

He reemerged in 2005, when he crowdfunded a full page ad in Italian newspaper Repubblica calling for the resignation of then-Italian Central Bank Governor Antonio Fazio. Thanks to that audacious move, Time Magazine named him one of its European Heroes. That same year, Grillo purchased a full page ad in the International Herald Tribune that demanded a ban on parliamentarians with a criminal record — no matter how small.

Italy’s convoluted political process makes progress hard to come by. Tax evasion and corruption are common practices in government, and the M5S’s opposition to such practices — paired with its adept use of social media — has spurred a furious rise to the head of Italian political polls.

Grillo and Casaleggio initially organized meetings on the site Meetup.com. They coalesced activist groups on campaigns and local issues and then used the popularity to field candidates for elections. They focused heavily on corruption and gained support by advocating cuts to parliamentarian salaries.

The M5S grew quickly by exploiting people’s legitimate grievances with traditional political parties and through their successful manipulation of the internet. They drew support from people from both traditional left and right constituencies, and across social and class lines.

“The reason why the M5S became so big is because in 2011 Italy had a technocrat government led by Mario Monti supported by the center-left and center-right parties,” Lorenzo De Sio, an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at LUISS University Rome, told ThinkProgress. “Monti took unpopular measures, and with no strong opposition party, the M5S was the only opposition voice.”

Running as a party opposed to the establishment in 2012, the M5S won mayoral races in three small cities and Parma, a provincial capital.

In 2013, the M5S was the most voted for party in Italy, not including votes from abroad. But the Italian electoral system, which heavily favors traditional parties, saw that only 109 of 630 deputy positions were granted to the M5S. Rome, long dominated by establishment parties, fell to the M5S in 2016 when Virginia Raggi became its mayor. The party has maintained around 30 percent of the country’s support ever since.

“The M5S feeds on real problems and disenchantment with political parties,” Dr. Matteo Garavoglia, a Non-Resident Fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe at The Brookings Institution, told ThinkProgress. “They are the best by far at exploiting the internet and are years ahead of other parties.”

The name M5S comes from five key issues it claims to focus most on: public water, sustainable transport, sustainable development, the right to internet access, and environmentalism.

The movement has also regularly promoted nonviolence, and opposes European austerity measures and foreign interventions. (It was against Western intervention in Libya and continues to speak out in opposition to American intervention in Syria.) The M5S also has said it wants to distance itself from the United States and improve relations with Russia.

But most of its policies aren’t carved in stone. “They have ambiguous positions,” De Sio said. “It’s a strength for them to avoid very clear policy commitments.”

“[Grillo] is not openly against immigration. He’s subtly anti-immigrant and clever about using dogwhistles against immigration.”

The movement claims to be neither right nor left, though they borrow from both sides.

“Their slogan is ‘we’re not with Trump, nor with Putin’,” Garavoglia said. “They are not with Europe. They have a new approach.”

They claim they are populist, anti-establishment, and Euro-skeptic but place a heavy emphasis on environmental issues and take what could be defined as a leftist position on austerity. They’ve also called for a referendum on whether to abandon the euro.

Direct democracy is central to M5S rhetoric. But since Casaleggio’s death in 2016, Grillo has consolidated power in the movement and taken a more authoritarian approach to party rule. Many members have left in recent times after being told to either fall in line with Grillo’s positions or be expelled.

These days it seems the movement’s positions are Grillo’s positions and vice versa. “All M5S MPs have to sign a contract that demands they strictly follow the leadership’s line,” Buzzfeed reported last year. Given who Grillo counts among his friends, that potentially means joining an alliance with some seriously unsavory characters.

Strange bedfellows

Grillo has spoken glowingly of Nigel Farage, former head of the British right-wing populist party UKIP. Farage — who also advised President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and is a current Fox News contributor — was one of the main advocates behind the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Shortly after the Brexit vote, he made his own Brexit and moved to the United States — just in time to attend Trump’s inauguration.

Grillo also supported Trump in the U.S. elections. He refused to pick a side in the French elections, though his view of immigrants is more aligned with that of the loser, Marine Le Pen.

“He is not openly against immigration,” De Sio said. “He’s subtly anti-immigrant and clever about using dogwhistles against immigration.”

Grillo compared migrants to rats in a tweet in 2015, suggesting that Rome could be “swamped by rats, rubbish and illegal immigrants.” Recently, members of the M5S have started spreading a conspiracy theory about aid workers colluding with human traffickers to make money and destabilize Europe.

Shortly after Sadiq Khan became London’s first Muslim mayor in 2016, Grillo drew criticism for asking when he would blow up Westminster.

Like many other populist movements, the M5S entered European parliament in recent years. Once ensconced in Brussels, they tried to join a bloc of left-leaning parties, but were rejected. Instead, they carried on in their current bloc, which includes UKIP.

Future

The M5S seem poised to do well in Italy’s next general election, which is set to be held in 2018. But as Brexit supporters and the Trump administration are now learning, it’s harder to placate anger and disenchantment than it is to rile it up.

Fulfilling their promises to voters would be especially hard for the M5S, which has vowed in the past not to join in coalitions with other parties. In Italy’s divided political landscape, it would be impossible to form any sort of government without other parties.

“They, like anyone else, may struggle to govern,” Garavoglia said. But votes for the M5S may be less about the expected outcome and more about trying what many Italians feel is their last option.

“It’s less love of the M5S and more ‘we tried everyone else’,” Garavoglia said.

On July 1, 2014, the Italian comedian Giuseppe ‘Beppe’ Grillo spoke to European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. About a month earlier, 17 disciples of his populist, Euro-skeptic movement, known locally as M5S, had been elected to represent Italy in the E.U., and Grillo took the occasion to introduce himself.

Grillo is a captivating orator. His hands chopped the air in symphony with his rising and falling voice. Speaking in Italian, he breathlessly complained about the complexity of the European system, about its fealty to banks, its reluctance to aid southern nations with the surge of refugees. “I don’t want to let my children live in this world,” he said, steadying himself on the arm of Nigel Farage, the driving force behind Brexit, seated to his right. “That’s why I’m here and why I changed my job and also changed my mental structure to come here and not make you laugh, not to make jokes. I am here to speak to you seriously.”

He always appears to be one irritation away from yelling. It’s clear why this man is now Italy’s most popular politician.

During the 1980s, Grillo’s stinging political satire upset the establishment to such an extent no one dared host him. He toiled in obscurity for almost 20 years until he came roaring back in 2005 with a hot malice against entrenched politics. With television appearances no longer an option, he crowdfunded full-page ads in Italian and international newspapers attacking parliamentarians and national leaders.

That audacious act catapulted him back into the spotlight. Time named him one of its European Heroes that year. Over a decade later, Grillo is all over TV. Except now his critique of political leaders isn’t limited to satirical programs. He’s the leader of an insurgent political movement that is also Italy’s most well-supported political party.

The 5 Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle) is a populist political movement with a complex set of positions. Whereas Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands have ideologies steeped in far-right populist rhetoric, the M5S is more of a paradox. It borrows from the right and the left, but is neither; nor is it a centrist party.

As I recently wrote for ThinkProgress, M5S positions on the environment might mirror those of a progressive American politician like Bernie Sanders. The five stars represent the movement’s five central tenets: the environment, public water, sustainable transportation, internet access and sustainable development.

These priorities often have them labelled as a progressive populist party — echoing descriptions of Sanders’ campaign for the American presidency. But there’s a side to the M5S that is harder to read. For some, it is ambiguous. Others would describe it as sinister.

“A number of their policies are vague or pander to both sides of the aisle,” Matteo Garavoglia, a nonresident fellow with the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, told Latterly. “It makes sense because politically they are neither right nor left, and they have support from the most diverse social groups and are also able to gain votes from traditional parties across the spectrum.”

For Grillo, the M5S was a second chance. His sharp commentary of Prime Minister Bettino Craxi, the Socialist Party leader, went too far for the premier’s taste, and the state broadcaster, RAI, banned him from its airwaves in 1986. A harsh sentence in those pre-internet days.

It wasn’t until 2005 that he would reemerge and set the stage for what would become a movement driven by his charisma and no-holds-barred critique of the traditional power brokers. Grillo crowdfunded two newspaper ads: one in the Italian daily La Repubblica, which called for the resignation of Italian Central Bank Governor Antonio Fazio, and one in the International Herald Tribune that demanded all parliamentarians with criminal records be barred from holding elected office.

The movement launched in 2009, led by Grillo and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist. Tired of corruption, tax evasion and a political system that struggles to enact any kind of progress, Grillo and Casaleggio captured the imagination of the populace — particularly young adults in a country where youth unemployment is at around 35 percent. They used the web to stoke disenchantment and distrust of an ineffectual establishment. The pair initially organized political meetings on Meetup.com and brought together like-minded activists. They then began fielding candidates for elections on anti-corruption platforms and advocated a reduction in parliamentarians’ salaries.

In 2012, they won mayoral races in three smaller towns, but the first major victory came in Parma, a provincial capital. Just a year later, the M5S was Italy’s most voted for party in Italy (not including votes coming from abroad) in local elections. They’ve since maintained around 30 percent of the nation’s support. In 2016, Virginia Raggi won the mayoral race in Rome, deposing the Democratic Party from a post it had held for 11 of the last 16 years.

Casaleggio died in 2016 from a stroke, and Grillo, now 68, has become the face of the movement. His blog, beppegrillo.it, is one of the 10 most read websites in the world, according to The Guardian, and he uses it to push his political agenda — sometimes even posting fake news stories peddled by Kremlin propaganda outlets.

Grillo is an outspoken proponent of direct democracy, but his words seem to contradict his actions. His authoritarian tendencies resemble many of the most dangerous figures of the European far right.

Disagreements with Grillo’s positions on issues have ended poorly for many in the movement. At least 37 members have either quit or been kicked out since the general elections in 2013. For instance, Senator Serenella Fucksia was accused of not repaying parliamentary stipends, but perhaps her gravest error was to vote against the movement 253 times, according to the Italian news wire ANSA. She was voted out of the party in 2015 via an online ballot on Grillo’s blog. The movement’s positions are actually just Grillo’s positions, and anyone who doesn’t like it is reeled in or jettisoned.

But getting a grip on Grillo’s policies can be a difficult task. The M5S promotes nonviolence and opposes foreign interventions. It has been outspoken against NATO’s intervention in Libya and opposes American involvement in Syria under any circumstances. It believes Italy should take a more centrist approach when it comes to balancing American and Russian relations — a stark contrast to the fraternity shared by former American President Barack Obama and Italy’s last prime minister, Matteo Renzi. They’ve also expressed a heavy dose of Euro-skepticism.

On issues related to immigration and migrants, Grillo’s comments are either menacing or ignorant, and it depends on your interpretation. He’s cited as using xenophobic dog whistles and regularly shifts away from issues that might be in support of people of color.

“The M5S is hard to finger,” said Camilla Hawthorne, a PhD candidate in geography at U.C. Berkeley who has written on racism in Italian society. This is true for most issues but especially pertinent on their policies related to immigrants, second-generation Italians and racism. “They’re either silent or opposed to [issues like] reform of citizenship, claiming it is a distraction from the needs of ‘real Italians.’”

In 2012, the Italian parliament was set to vote on changing the law on birthright citizenship. In Italy, citizenship is granted based on lineage as opposed to place of birth. A famous example was the case of Italian soccer player Mario Balotelli. Balotelli was born in Palermo and grew up in Brescia. He was adopted by a Jewish couple and speaks with a thick Brescian accent. His first professional club was Internazionale and he made appearances at 17 years old, leading to calls that he appear for the Italian national team. But because his parents were Ghanaians, he was still not a citizen. Balotelli had to wait until he was 18 to gain nationality.

When time came to vote on altering citizenship requirements to make it easier for people like Balotelli to gain nationality, Lega Nord, the hard-right nativist party, voted no. The M5S abstained. Their argument is that such issues are a distraction from the real issues that impact real Italians.

“Real Italians are a nebulous category of people,” Hawthorne said. Similar language has been used by right-wing politicians in other countries.

Immigration to Italy was sparse until a few decades ago. In the last 20 to 30 years, Italy has witnessed a rapid increase in immigration from around Europe as well as North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Romanians are the largest group of immigrants in Italy, though Moroccans, Egyptians, Nigerians and a number of other nationalities are well-represented.

Despite the increase in migrants and refugees, as well as second-generation Italians who are the children of immigrants, the Italian government’s response has been lacking. The state has failed to create programs to properly integrate foreigners or, more importantly, to help Italians accept the new face of their country.

“The seeds of challenges related to immigration go back 30 years,” said Garavoglia, of the Brookings Institution. “Italy is paying the price because integration policies have been somewhere between ineffective and inexistent. Far too little has been done.”

The recent increase in immigration, widely regarded by Italian media and politicians as the “migrant crisis,” has left a bitter taste for many across Italian society — even those who don’t consider themselves racist. It doesn’t help that the issue has been mishandled by successive governments from across the political spectrum.

The M5S has jumped on this popular sentiment and leveraged it to gain support from traditional or fringe right-wing movements. After the M5S performed poorly in local elections June 11, Raggi sent a letter to the Interior Minister asking for a moratorium on relocating more migrants to her city, calling it “risky.”

“[The M5S] are subtly anti-immigrant,” Lorenzo De Sio, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at LUISS University Rome, told Latterly. “They are prodding in a politically correct way against immigrants.”

The latest incident was a conspiracy theory brought up by a prosecutor in Sicily. The prosecutor claimed humanitarian NGOs are working with human traffickers to bring in migrants and refugees to Italy in an effort to further destabilize Europe. Experts say little to no proof exists to perpetuate this tall tale. Nonetheless, M5S members jumped on these claims.

“Every now and then Grillo releases a statement against immigration that is highly heated and very dangerous and approximate to a pure form of racism,” Marcello Maneri, a professor of sociology at Milan-Bicocca, told Latterly.

In 2015, Grillo associated immigrants with vermin and filth when he said Rome could soon be “swamped by rats, rubbish and illegal immigrants.” Shortly after London elected its first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, Grillo drew controversy for a blatantly Islamophobic statement. Grillo asked when Khan would blow up Westminster.

The interesting paradox here is that many M5S supporters likely disagree with Grillo’s positions on immigration and refugees, and it likely won’t impact the party’s success at the polls.

“A lot of people will not agree, but they won’t lose votes,” Maneri said. “Those people will vote for M5S because they are against corruption, and they are the new against the old political class. They don’t care about their position against immigrants.”

If anything, the M5S could gain new voters from the right who are also sick of the political establishment. The most powerful right-leaning party is Forza Italia, the party of former prime minister and owner of soccer club A.C. Milan, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi’s myriad affairs and scandals, however, have left the party a shambles and ripe for the picking.

An election is set for 2018, and M5S is expected to have a strong performance, leading in many opinion polls. In 2013, M5S finished second, but Italy’s convoluted electoral system favors traditional parties and the movement ended up with only 109 out of 630 deputies in parliament. This time around they are expected to take more seats.

But to rule the government will be another task entirely. As other populists have quickly found out, riling up anger against problems ailing society is easier than solving them. In Rome, Raggi has run into troubles and criticism for failing to fulfill lofty campaign promises, including relocating migrants from North Africa and Ethiopia and solving a longstanding garbage crisis.

The M5S has also vowed not to form any alliances with establishment political parties. Part of its legitimacy comes from labelling itself as an outsider, uncorrupted movement. But Italy’s parliamentary system is complicated, and it’s impossible that the M5S will win enough seats to govern without forming a coalition. This will be a challenge for whichever leader succeeds Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni into power.

“Their strength now could be a weakness once they are in the government,” Garavoglia said. He foresees a few options, though none is ideal for the M5S.

The first would be to forge a coalition with the Democratic Party of Gentiloni and his predecessor (who is also forging a comeback for the premiership) Renzi. This is the “most unlikely,” Garavoglia said, due to the high level of animosity between M5S and the Democrats. The second choice would be to partner with Forza Italia. The problems here would stem from sparse shared ideology or policy. Forza Italia also struggles to pull seats.

Lastly, it could join up with Lega Nord. This union would be reminiscent of the few Sanders supporters who switched their allegiance to Trump. But the only agreement between the two groups would be their rejection of the establishment and their interpretation of “real Italians.” Furthermore, support for Lega Nord is minimal, and it’s unlikely they’ll be able to bring any significant number of votes to impact legislation.

It might be odd to expect the seemingly progressive M5S to align with a right-wing party like Lega Nord, but it wouldn’t be the first time. M5S members of European Parliament are in a block of parties to which the U.K. Independence Party is also a member. UKIP was the driving force behind Brexit, and its former party leader — turned Trump campaign adviser and Fox News contributor — Nigel Farage has received praise from Grillo in the past. Grillo also backed Trump in the U.S. elections last year.

“All coalition possibilities will be uncomfortable,” Garavoglia said.

Whoever they align with, if anyone, experts believe support for the M5S is not necessarily binding beyond the upcoming election. Other parties have lost votes because of distrust and disenfranchisement. The populace is tired of corruption, tax evasion, clientelism and a lack of career opportunities for the youth.

Italians feel they’ve tried everyone else and nothing has worked out the way they want, Garavoglia said. Now, it’s the M5S’ turn to try. It could certainly send a shockwave to Italy’s traditional parties and the European Union’s establishment. It could also be a dangerous prospect for people of color and the integrity of the Eurozone. The populist wave may have failed to uproot France, Austria and the Netherlands, but the threat it poses to Europe isn’t over yet.

The French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen is visiting Lebanon, and it seems like an opportunist attempt to gain support of French citizens who are anti-Muslim (maybe many French-Lebanese dual citizens?).

I’m not a political analyst or social critic, but I do tell stories for a living. Most of those stories so far have been reported from and about Lebanon — a country with a history of complex relations between religious sects.

Sometimes I struggle to tell these stories — who are they for? Foreigners, who have a fairly monotone view of Beirut and the relationship Islam has with society? Do I add caveats? Or should I address locals or those who lived there and understand the nuances? I don’t really know. So, I’ll just tell this story for myself.

In 2013, I moved into an apartment on the third floor of an old building in Beirut’s Qantari neighborhood. The surrounding structures all appeared to have been recently torn down and rebuilt into luxurious apartments for Beirut’s middle-upper classes, making my building the last of its contemporaries.

It was painted daffodil yellow and had pine green shudders. No elevator, just three flights of giant stairs. On the corner was a Harley Davidson Motorcycle shop. Next to it was the Qantari mosque, where my landlord would go to pray five times a day and whose call to prayer I would hear on the occasion I was lying in bed awake at 3 a.m.

On Fridays, I’d cover my head with my pillow to drown out the sound of the national anthem blasting from the school at the other end of the road. On Sundays, I’d hear the bells of a church two blocks away ring through my open balcony door, where a view of the Mediterranean was obstructed by a gauche bank building.

Directly across from my apartment were two general stores. One was owned and operated by two young Syrian guys. When I was absent from the store for a few days, they’d ask me where I’d been. Next door was a cell phone shop, owned by a British-Lebanese dual national who was dragged back to Lebanon by nostalgia. His experiment lasted just about a year before reality sent him back to London with his wife and two kids. In his place, a Syrian refugee ran the store (he’s now in Germany; I don’t know who runs the store or if it’s even open anymore).

Below me was a small shop that we paid monthly for TV service. The first month I had an issue with their service and got into a yelling match with Ali, the tanned, mustached and raspy-voiced guy who installed the service and collected the bills. I thought he was ripping me off. He might have been, but either way we became friendly after that, and he’d always scream out “Hello!” in English, while zipping by on his motorized scooter when he saw me on the street.

One of the most interesting people I met was my landlord’s mother. She was an elderly woman, usually donning a white head scarf. She was always jovial. She lived on the first floor. I don’t think she got out much, but sometimes she’d step outside her front door and look out off the steps onto the street. I’d pass her on my way out of the building, and she’d greet me joyfully and gab about how the neighborhood used to be when her kids were kids and all the changes that had taken place during and since the war.

Her children had grown up in the building. Now her grandson and his two children were living on the fourth floor of that same building. (I have a great story with him, but I’ll save that for another time).

I remember a few stories of our interactions, but for the sake of brevity I’ll recount one. It was around the summer of 2014 and I’d started growing a beard. Many pious Muslim men wear beards as a show of faith. Many pious Muslim and non-Muslim men also wear beards as a show of fashion. Mine was the latter as I’m neither all that pious nor Muslim.

As I descended the stairs, she caught a look of my new facial hair and immediately stuck her finger in my face. “Get rid of it!” she said, loudly and playfully, but there were clear serious undertones.

“You don’t like it?” I asked.

“No, not at all!” she replied. “I don’t let any of my sons have beards!”

Her son, my landlord, must have been in his 50s. And it’s true, he’s clean-shaven every day. I didn’t end up shaving my beard, and she dropped the issue. She went back to telling me stories about the neighborhood and the old days. I still have a beard almost three years later. But if I shave it one day, I think I’d like to go back and show her. Even if she’s forgotten about me by then.

MILAN—Diseases rarely seen in modern society are popping back up in Italyand elsewhere in Europe, where a slew of rumors linking vaccines to supposed complications like autism are spreading with the help of populist politicians.

The most prominent backer of such rumors here is Beppe Grillo, Italy’s most popular politician and the leader of the populist Five Star Movement.

“Vaccines have played a fundamental role in eradicating terrible illnesses such as polio, diphtheria and hepatitis,” Grillo wrote on his blog in 2015, when he first seized on the issue. “However, they bring a risk associated with side effects that are usually temporary and surmountable… but in very rare cases, can be as severe as getting the same disease you’re trying to be immune to.”

Despite all the qualifiers, the message was one of fear and conspiracy, always useful to those who want to rally the masses. Grillo was riding a wave.

As The Daily Beast reported in 2015, that year was supposed to be the year that measles was eradicated in Europe. The goal was set a decade earlier when vaccines, though not mandatory, were not-so-subtly required for school admission in a growing number of European countries. But instead of eradication, Europe faced one of the worst outbreaks of the preventable diseases of measles and rubella in recent memory. The number of cases of measles in Europe grew by 348 percent after 2007, climbing from 7,073 cases then to 31,685 cases in 2013 according to the World Health Organization. For the moment, Europe is polio free, and globally the crippling, deadly disease has been on the way to eradication—thanks to vaccinations. But the measles example shows how quickly such gains can be reversed.

Grillo’s party picked up on the issue and the ensuing polarization over vaccines has had a palpable effect on Italian society, taking a bad situation and making it all the worse.

The Five Star Movement (or 5SM, if you will) is Italy’s most popular political movement. Populist, euro-skeptics who bill themselves as outsiders, the 5SM began in 2009 when Grillo, now 68, and his web-strategist colleague, Gianroberto Casaleggio, began hosting gatherings through the website Meetup.com to draw out disillusioned Italian youth.

Grillo’s fame derived from his stinging political satire as a TV comedian in the ’80s. He was banned from television in 1987 for his critiques of the establishment and waited in obscurity for almost 20 years. Then, in 2005, he roared back into public consciousness when he took out a full-page ad in the Italian daily La Repubblica calling for the resignation of then-Italian Central Bank Governor Antonio Fazio, and another full-page ad in the International Herald Tribune demanding a ban on parliamentarians with criminal records. These exploits led to Time magazine naming Grillo a “European Hero.”

Grillo’s personal star and the 5SM’s internet savviness fueled their meteoric rise over the next few years. Their ability to tap into the disenchantment caused by the political establishment also contributed to their success, as did their publicizing of environment issues that appeal directly to Italy’s youth.

In 2013 they were the most-voted-for party in Italy. And despite a sluggish performance in local elections last month, the 5SM is expected to be a major player in next year’s elections for parliament.

With all that power, Grillo often uses his influence to propagate fake news and disseminate obscure weblinks to conspiracy theories.

Grillo regularly posts questionably sourced stories on his blog, which is said to be one of the top 10 read websites on the planet. His anti-vaccination propaganda, in particular, drew condemnation in a New York Times editorial published this past May.

He is not alone, as we know. The ranks of anti-vaxxers in the United States have included Jim Carrey, Jenny McCarthy, and even American President Donald Trump.

Earlier this year, @realDonaldTrump wrote on his Twitter account, “Healthy young child goes to doctor, gets pumped with massive shot of many vaccines, doesn’t feel good and changes - AUTISM. Many such cases!”

Such issues are becoming more common across Europe. In France, more than 20 percent of the population does not support vaccinations. Marine Le Pen, the leader of far right party the National Front, said in early July she was “completely opposed” to mandatory vaccinations. Such attitudes have also caught on in recent years in, Poland, Romania, Switzerland, Ukraine, Austria, and Germany, where 504 cases of measles were reported by mid-April (compared to just 33 cases from the same period in 2016).

In Italy, the first half of 2017 saw the number of measles cases triple from 2016. Out of 3,000 new cases of measles recorded through June, 40 percent of the infected faced complications. Italy’s last outbreak of measles saw 18,000 registered cases and led to 15 deaths. The fallout for doubting vaccines has made such an impact that a few Five Star Movement members have walked back vaccine doubts. Paola Ferrara, a Five Star Movement member who works in the city hall in Rome, said in May she considered vaccinations “essential.”

But vaccines aside, the 5SM does plenty of damage to Italian society by propagating other baseless rumors. In May, other high-ranking members of the 5SM helped propagate a vicious conspiracy targeting NGOs and charities working with refugees. 5SM repeated claims by a public prosecutor from Sicily that accused groups of colluding with human traffickers with an aim of unsettling the Italian economy. No evidence has been found to support this claim.

While some members have walked back to the center on vaccines, the movement has shifted further right on a number of issues including on receiving migrants. Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi said her city could no longer afford the “devastating social cost” of receiving refugees. Only a few months earlier she had delivered a different message:

“We as mayors and our cities face the effects of large immigration inflows. It is our duty to guarantee dignity, shelter and human warmth to newcomers. Negative attitudes and closure offend our human dignity.”

The Italian parliament approved measures to increase the number of troops in North Africa earlier this month in an effort to combat migration and terrorism in the region.

After the approval Jan. 17, Italian officials said troops would focus on countering terrorism and ensuring security. Doubts, however, remain over the true motive, considering recent frantic efforts to prevent refugees and migrants from setting sail for Italian shores.

“It is clear that Italy’s foreign policy priorities have shifted and managing migration flows from Africa through the Maghreb is now the most pressing issue,” Riccardo Fabbiano, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst with the Eurasia Group, told Al-Monitor. “While remaining loyal to its NATO commitments, Italy is trying to prioritize the issue of migration, which is already a central theme in the current electoral campaign.”

Italy said it would remove 200 troops from Iraq and half its Afghanistan operation from 1,500 troops to 750 in order to increase its North Africa operation. An additional 30 troops will go to Libya, taking the total troop count to 400, while 60 new troops will go to Tunisia and 470 will go to Niger where they hope to combat human traffickers.

The deployment of Italian troops in Tunisia has been requested by the government there to help with training and advising the Tunisian military. Tunisia is still weary of militant attacks after three incidents in 2015-16: the Bardo Museum attack, the Sousse beach attack and the cross-border Ben Gardane attack.

Next door, in Libya, the current 370 Italian troops have been training the Libyan coast guard. Migration is a major electoral issue, and Italy is prepping for parliamentary elections on March 4. While the troop deployment has been advertised to help fight terrorism, the Italian motives seem to be intertwined with migration as well.

“Is there any clear distinction to be made between counterterrorism and migration? I don’t think there truly is one,” Jalel Harchaoui, a doctoral candidate in geopolitics at Paris 8 University and a frequent commentator on Libyan affairs, told Al-Monitor. “Both phenomena tend to come hand in hand with anarchy. Right now, minds are particularly focused on migration. But in 2015 and 2016, the focus was on Daesh [the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State] and jihadist groups in general. One thing is certain: If the overall security situation worsens in Libya, both banes will experience an uptick. That is the fear.”

Over 100,000 refugees or migrants arrived in Italy in each of the last two years. Last year, the total was 119,130 while in 2016 the number was significantly higher at 181,436, according to The Guardian. The majority set sail from the Libyan coast after traveling through the Sahel. The Italian government has worked with and built relationships in recent years with both competing governments in Libya over trying to halt the large number of people from taking to the sea. Rome tends to favor the United Nations-backed government of Fayez al-Sarraj, based in Tripoli.

“Specifically on Libya, the marginal increase in the size of the mission is nothing new — this mission’s aim is twofold: guarding a military hospital in Misrata and training the Libyan coast guard,” Fabbiano said. “Nothing changes with this increase. What changes, though, is how this military presence should play a more effective role in stemming migration, thanks to the parallel missions in Niger and Tunisia.”

In Libya, however, the increase of troops hasn’t been received particularly well. The collective memory in Libya still recalls the Italian colonization that lasted from 1910 to 1947. When Italy deployed naval vessels off the Libyan shores in August last year, Libyans hit the streets, calling on the Government of National Accord (GNA) to step down. Posters circulated of the Libyan resistance hero Omar al-Mukhtar, who battled Italian colonization in the 1920s.

Conspiracy theories are circulating, according to a field worker with an international nongovernmental organization working on the ground in Libya who wasn’t cleared by the organization to speak to the media. There is a widely spread theory: Italy wants to reoccupy Libya, the source said, with local media presenting the topic from a negative prospective.

Internal politics in Libya may allow such rumors to spread, too. The GNA seems to be the favorite of Italy at the moment, but the Libyan National Army, which rules the eastern part of the country and is led by Gen. Khalifa Hifter, is increasingly in vogue with international rulers. The competing governments are locked in a chess match for power and legitimacy over Libya. Meanwhile, Libyan leaders have often had to walk a fine line between seeking international help and legitimacy and maintaining popular support on the domestic front.

“Italy has displayed a tendency to strike deals with the GNA in Tripoli and also local groups across the western half of Libya,” Harchaoui said. “Hifter has a political incentive to criticize Rome’s action in Libya.”

But with the elections approaching, these policies could change based on the winner. Currently, Silvio Berlusconi’s center right coalition — who supported the increase in troop deployment to the region — is thought to have the best chance at winning an outright majority or forming a successful parliamentary ruling bloc. The country’s most popular single party, however, is the Five Star Movement. While the movement voted against the deployment — arguing it wouldn’t allow the new government to set a foreign policy agenda of its own — they have also repeatedly voted against forming coalitions with other parties and are unlikely to receive enough votes to rule on their own.

“Nobody knows what Rome’s new Libya policy will [be] after the elections,” Harchaoui said. “And nobody knows what the migrant flow will look like when the winter season is over.”

When news broke that ISIS killed 130 people in Paris, this Detroit suburb known for its thriving Arab American community prepared for the inevitable retaliation. The day before, three Dearborn, Michigan residents had been killed in an attack — also claimed by ISIS — in the suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, but locals here often aren’t afforded the time to mourn.

Progressives in Israel are facing attacks on their free speech from the country’s right wing, in what activists say is a concerted effort by right wing NGOs and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

For a 13-year-old, Izaque José da Silva has seen his share of suffering. His two older brothers, Joseildo and Lucas, were killed after getting involved with drugs. Many members of the community in Penedo de Cima — located in São Lourenço da Mata, Brazil — castigated da Silva and his family, pegging him for a similar fate. But a drive to avoid his brothers’ tragic path, combined with his love for soccer, saved this young Brazilian’s life.

In 2011, Egyptians flooded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square and demanded an end to Hosni Mubarak’s bumptious 30 year reign. Mubarak’s dismissal as leader instilled Egyptians with a renewed sense of optimism, as they awaited their nation’s amelioration.

When Basma Abdel Aziz wrote her latest novel The Queue, Egypt had just experienced the first phase of a revolution that overthrew the three decade rule of dictator Hosni Mubarak and resulted in the first democratically elected president in Egypt’s modern history. The country was riding a wave of democratic euphoria, but where Egyptians saw prosperity, Abdel Aziz noticed that the country’s powerful military was still lurking in the background — exactly as it had during the Mubarak era.

In recent months, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has come under increasing pressure and criticism from the U.S. Congress and the British Parliament for its human rights abuses both at home and in the ongoing conflict in Yemen. Meanwhile, Saudi diplomats and leaders have worked tirelessly to improve relations with Russia, China, and other nations.

Dugin’s connections to America’s racist circuit is well established.

A photograph of a deceased Syrian boy who drowned in the Mediterranean and washed ashore on the Turkish coast shook the world Wednesday. A shot of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s little body resting face-down went viral on social media and Thursday it adorned the front page of most British newspapers.